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VIII

POTTERY, TILES, BRICKS, GLASS

THE manufacture of earthen vessels was one of the
earliest, as it-was one of the most widespread, industries.
From the end of the Stone Age onwards, wherever
suitable clay was to be found, the potter plied his trade.
The Romans, who had brought the art of potting to
a high pitch of excellence, introduced improved methods
into Britain, where numerous remains of kilns and
innumerable fragments of pottery testify to the industry
and the individuality of the Romano-British potters.
Several quite distinct types of pottery have been
identified, and are assignable to definite localities. Great
quantities of black and grey wares, consisting of articles
of common domestic use, ornamented for the most part
only with broad bands of darker or lighter shading, were
made in Kent near the Medway, the finer specimens
being associated with Upchurch.1 From the potteries
in the New Forest 2 came vases of greater ornamental
and artistic execution, but it was the neighbourhood of
Castor in Northamptonshire that occupied in Roman
times the place held in recent times by Staffordshire.
Round Castor numbers of kilns have been found,3 and
the peculiar dark ware, with its self-coloured slip

1 C. Roach Smith, Collect. Ant., vi. 173-99.

2 Arch. Journ., xxx. 319—24 ; Surnner, Account of the Roman
Pottery made at Ashley Rails (1919).

3 See V. C. H. Northants, i. 206-12.

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